Research
confirms that digital opportunity depends not only on access to computers and
broadband, but the competencies necessary to successfully navigate the online
world and be more competitive in the 21st century. America’s
libraries are on the forefront of connecting learners of all ages with formal
and informal digital literacy skills training, as well as access to a wide
range of technology resources.

For these reasons, the American Library
Association is pleased to collaborate
with the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information
Administration to support DigitalLiteracy.gov. This new portal is an important first step in collecting and sharing
class materials, research, and online learning tools. We look forward to
greatly expanding the content available as librarians, educators and other
practitioners engage with the website.

From their inception,
libraries of all kinds have had the development, promotion, and advancement of
literacy at the core of their mission. Now libraries combine trained staff, technology infrastructure and
robust electronic collections to meet diverse needs that continue to change and
grow. School librarians teach the skills necessary to find and evaluate web
resources, and they support use of online collaborative tools that help ensure
our students leave school ready for higher education and the 21st
century workforce. Information literacy is now considered by several
accreditation associations as a key outcome for college students.

The U.S. Census Bureau
today released two 2010 Census briefs summarizing important demographic trends
on the Hispanic population and Age and Sex Composition in the United
States over the past decade.

The Hispanic Population: 2010 looks at an
important part of our nation’s changing ethnic diversity with a particular focus
on groups of Hispanic origin, including Mexican, Dominican and Cuban. Between 2000 and 2010, the
Hispanic population grew by 43 percent – four times the 9.7-percent growth of
the total U.S. population. The increase was a
difference of 15.2 million people and accounted for more than half of the total
population increase of 27.3 million people.

Age and Sex Composition: 2010 reports on
our nation’s changing
age and sex composition and shows that while Americans have gotten older, the
male population has grown faster than the female population over the last
decade. Of the total 2010 Census population, 157.0 million people, or 50.8
percent, were female and 151.8 million, or 49.2 percent, were male.

Guest
blog post by Dr.
Rebecca Blank, Acting Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

In
January, President Obama issued
an executive order outlining his plan to create a 21st century
regulatory system that encourages job creation, economic growth and U.S.
competitiveness. The idea was to make it simpler, smarter and more efficient,
while still protecting the health and safety of the American people. As a
key part of that plan, he called upon government agencies to conduct a
comprehensive review of the rules and regulations currently on the books and to
remove those that are outdated, unnecessary or excessively burdensome.

This
review has led agencies, including the Department of Commerce, to identify
initiatives that have the potential to eliminate tens of millions of hours in
reporting burdens and billions of dollars in regulatory costs. Today, the
results of each agency’s review is being made public and posted on
Whitehouse.gov.

Here
at the Commerce Department, we focused our plan on those bureaus with the
greatest regulatory activity: the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the
International Trade Administration (ITA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office
(USPTO).

A new, free software tool from Commerce's National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST) could prove to be a breath of fresh air for
architects and designers of ventilation systems for "green" commercial
buildings.

With the Climate Suitability Tool, building design teams can
evaluate whether the local climate is suitable for cooling a prospective
building with natural ventilation or requires a hybrid system that
supplies supplemental cooling capacity. The tool is based on a model of
the heat-related characteristics of a building configured to take full
advantage of ambient climate conditions and natural air movement. It
incorporates an algorithm—or problem-solving procedure—that crunches
hourly weather data (downloaded from annual datasets for U.S.
localities) and uses standardized criteria for rating the comfort of
building occupants.

"We think this tool will be useful during the early stages of design,
when decisions on the form of a building and its components are being
made," explains NIST mechanical engineer Steven Emmerich. "It provides
estimates of ventilation rates for preliminary design calculations. You
can approximate how many air changes per hour will be necessary to
offset heat gains due to the occupants, equipment and lighting so that
comfortable conditions are maintained."

The effects of direct natural ventilation and a nighttime cooling
procedure are assessed using a method devised by James Axley, Yale
University professor of architecture and engineering. When the outdoor
temperature is below an accepted threshold, direct ventilation through
open windows and by other means can deliver the cooling to maintain the
comfort zone. When the outdoor temperature exceeds the threshold during
the day but drops below it after sunset, the cooler nightime air can
dilute heat gained during the day and build a reserve of cooling
potential for the day to come. Read NIST's Tech Beat story

Guest blog post by Francisco Sánchez, Under Secretary of Commerce for International
Trade

The U.S. Travel Association’s International Pow Wow is the
travel industry’s premier international marketplace and the largest generator
of USA
travel.

The three-day event is action-packed and filled with pre-scheduled
business appointments, with more than 5,000 attendees expected and
international and domestic buyers and representatives from more than 70
countries will be attending. The
business negotiations that take place result in the generation of more than
$3.5 billion in future USA
travel. In other words, Pow Wow is a big
deal.

We at the
Commerce Department have enjoyed a close relationship with Pow Wow for years
and added the conference into the Department’s International Buyer Program in
2011. The International Trade Administration (ITA) recruited qualified buyers
from all over the world to attend Pow Wow.
There are currently 1,135 international buyer delegates, including
delegations from emerging markets like China
and the Czech Republic, and
1,047 U.S.
companies registered for the show this year.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported today that among those who moved
between 2009 and 2010, more than four out of
10 did so for housing-related reasons, including the desire to live in a new or better home or
apartment.

Family concerns, such as a change in marital status, and employment
needs were other factors cited as reason for moving in the
new report, Geographical
Mobility: 2010.

“Tracking mobility allows us to examine shifts in demographic trends in
the population for the nation, regions and metro areas as a whole,” said David Ihrke,
survey statistician in the Census Bureau's Social, Economic and Housing
Statistics Division.

In 2010, 37.5 million people 1 year and older in the United
States had changed
residences within the past year, a rate fairly similar to that in 2009.
Among those who moved, 69.3 percent stayed within the
same county, 16.7 percent moved to a different county in the same state, 11.5
percent moved to a different state, and 2.5 percent moved to the United
States from abroad.

People in the Northeast were the least likely to move
at a rate of 8.3 percent in 2010, followed by the Midwest at 11.8 percent, the South at 13.6 percent, and the
West at 14.7 percent. While principal cities within metropolitan areas experienced a net
loss of 2.3 million movers between 2009 and 2010, suburbs saw a net gain
of 2.5 million movers. Release

The Commerce
Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA), along with 15 other
federal agencies within the Obama Administration, today announced a $33 million
Jobs and
Innovation Accelerator Challenge to drive innovation-fueled job creation and
global competitiveness through public-private partnerships in at least 20
regions around the country.

The Challenge will award
funds to regions with high-growth industries that support a wide range of
economic and workforce development activities.

The Department of
Labor’s Employment and Training Administration will invest up to $20 million for
technical skills training; EDA will invest up to $10 million in Economic
Adjustment Assistance funds; and the Small Business Administration will invest
up to $3 million in technical assistance.

The Obama administration
is committed to smarter use of existing federal resources to foster regional
innovation in support of sustainable economic prosperity. Strong industry
clusters – like the Research Triangle in North
Carolina or Silicon Valley in California – promote robust economic
ecosystems and the development of a skilled workforce, both of which are
critical to long-term regional success.

“Regional innovation
clusters bring together the knowledge and financial resources that America
needs to compete in the global economy,” said NationalEconomic Council
Director Gene Sperling. “The Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge will help
regional innovation clusters produce the nextgeneration of innovative
products and drive sustainable economic growth and job creation.”

The deadline to apply to
the Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge is July 7, 2011. Details about the
application process are available here.

New database to store and share intellectual property rights training
materials across federal agencies to promote more
effective international enforcement training

The United States Patent and Trademark Office, in
cooperation with the Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement
Coordinator, today announced the launch of a new online database where U.S. government
agencies can now post
information about the intellectual property rights (IPR) training
programs they conduct around the world.

“The database is intended to facilitate more efficient
use of limited IPR training resources by sharing training materials among
U.S. government agencies, avoiding
duplicative programs, and identifying IPR enforcement training deficiencies,”
said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the
USPTO David Kappos.

Working closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security and other agencies that conduct international enforcement training, the
USPTO established the database for storing and sharing training materials among
federal agencies. The database is fully searchable and includes each program’s
title, location, description, participants by country, background, and more.
To date, more than 100 training and
technical assistance programs that relate to protecting intellectual property
rights have been entered into the database. ReleaseWeb site

On the heels of the APEC 2011 meetings in Big Sky, Montana, Secretary Gary Locke and Senator Max Baucus visited West Paw Design today, a Montana-based manufacturer of eco-friendly pet toys, beds and apparels. Touring its sustainable manufacturing facilities, Locke praised West Paw for its green manufacturing methods and efforts to export its products to foreign markets. Promoting green growth among businesses of the Asia-Pacific region is one of the key goals of APEC 2011.

“West Paw exemplifies the kind of green growth and aggressive exporting that we need from small- and medium-sized businesses to reinvigorate our economy,” Locke said. “It is the export successes of companies like West Paw that are going to help our economy grow, create jobs and meet President Obama’s goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years.”

West Paw, which exports its products to 28 foreign markets, showcased its best sustainable manufacturing practices to more than 70 participants during the tour, including APEC trade officials and private sector representatives from the 21 APEC economies.

West
Paw Design integrated sustainability into its manufacturing processes and
product design by using recycled and organic materials. The company has 46
employees and has more than doubled the size of its manufacturing facility in
2010 in order to handle the growing demand for its products. It has
utilized several federal government resources to help boost its exports,
including the Commerce Department’s U.S. Commercial Service, Manufacturing
Extension Partnership and loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Guest blog post by Anna Gomez, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

On
Tuesday, I joined a group of Hispanic
community development leaders in San Francisco to launch the Latino Tech-Net
Initiative, a Recovery Act project spearheaded by the Mission
Economic Development Agency, or MEDA, which is equipping 17 computer
centers in 11 cities across the country with equipment, software, and training
to help Latino entrepreneurs and small businesses build online skills, spur local economic development, and support job
creation in their communities.

The
“digital divide” remains a serious issue for the Latino community, and MEDA is on the front lines of addressing this
problem. Data from NTIA’s Digital
Nation report show that the broadband adoption rate among Hispanic
households is only 56.9 percent - more than ten percent lower than the overall
national rate. In fact, even after adjusting for socioeconomic characteristics
like income and education, Latino households significantly lag White households
in broadband adoption.

Through
Recovery Act projects like Latino Tech-Net, we
are working to bridge the technology gap among economically
vulnerable populations such as minorities, low-income
communities, people with disabilities and seniors. We know there is no
simple ‘one size fits all’ solution to closing the digital divide and that a
combination of targeted approaches makes sense.